cancer

Are you dreading upgrading your graphics processor yet again just so you can get lost in the alien-infested urban jungle of Crysis 2? Rest assured that the immersive power of these state-of-the-art video processors is now being used for more than just visual pleasure.

A new technique for processing X-rays appears to lower the radiation patients are exposed to during cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans by a factor of 10 or more, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego.

The research is being presented this week at the American Association of Physicists in Medicine's 52nd annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Lead author Xun Jia, a UCSD postdoctoral fellow, based his team's work on recent advances in compressed sensing by developing a CT reconstruction algorithm for graphics processing unit platforms (GPU cards being used for 3D computer graphics, often in video games), thereby increasing computational efficiency to reconstruct a cone beam CT scan in just minutes.… Read more

An emerging technology called Lab-on-Bead could cut years off drug development time, according to new research to be published in the September/October issue of the Journal of Molecular Recognition.

Lab-on-Bead is a diagnostics tool that essentially decorates tiny beads--so small that roughly 1,000 of them could fit across a human hair--with pins designed to join the DNA bar codes of drugs to matching diseases. This process enables researchers to match drugs to diseases in a single step, speeding up drug discovery by up to 10,000 times, the team reports.

"There are an infinite number of possibilities … Read more

Using a $400 Olympus E-330 digital camera, Rice University biomedical engineers and University of Texas cancer researchers report in PLoS ONE this week that they are able to distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells with only a little tweaking.

"Consumer-grade cameras can serve as powerful platforms for diagnostic imaging," says lead author and Rice professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum in the school's news release. "Based on portability, performance, and cost, you could make a case for using them both to lower health care costs in developed countries and to provide services that simply aren't available in resource-poor … Read more

San Francisco appears poised to become the first city in the U.S. to require a cell phone makers to publicly display how much radiation their products emit.

On Tuesday, the city's board of supervisors voted 10-1 in favor of a new law that requires handset makers to post in stores their products' specific absorption rate (SAR), which is a measure of the amount of radio waves absorbed by the user's body. (See also: CNET's Quick Guide: Cell phone radiation levels)

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is expected to sign the measure into law.

There's no … Read more

The detection and treatment of solid cancers such as lung, breast, ovarian, colon, and prostate cancers could be on the verge of a major makeover, thanks to a new blood test developed at the University of Nottingham and spinoff company Oncimmune.

Early in a tumor's development, cancer cells produce antigens that trigger the body's immune system to release auto-antibodies in an attempt to fight them off. The body produces an abundance of these auto-antibodies to win the battle--more than the tumor does antigens, making the auto-antibodies easier to detect.

The test measures a panel of auto-antibodies in a … Read more

After spending 10 years and $24 million to see whether cell phone use leads to brain cancer, the World Health Organization has reached a verdict: it's not quite sure.

In a decade-long survey of nearly 13,000 people across 13 countries, the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determined that most cell phone use did not lead to an increased risk of either meningioma, a common but typically benign form of cancer, or glioma, a rare but more dangerous type of brain cancer.

The study results, released Monday, did see "suggestions" that using cell … Read more

Currently, radiologists measure the sizes of potentially cancerous lung nodules by measuring their largest widths using a two-dimensional computer screen. (The method widely used to do this is called RECIST.) Now, researchers are investigating volumetrics, by which they can measure nodules in 3D.

Thanks to work done by a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in the simplest of cancer cases, volumetrics appears to reveal volume changes far more precisely than currently possible on 2D screens, which could cut diagnosis time from six months down to four weeks, the researchers estimate.

"We found … Read more

Is this the ultimate early adopter penalty? If you buy more than two iPads to send to your friends overseas or give to your family, you risk a lifetime ban on future purchases? That just can't be right. Also not right: the sweet little child who calls tell us how to get porn on the iPhone. Just upsetting. Plus: Palm deathwatch and Facebook's privacy untangled (er, sort of).

Lenovo interested in buying Palm http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTOE63M04J20100423 http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=33519… Read more

A new, decades-long study launches Thursday to investigate possible links between cell phone use and a series of health problems, including cancer and Alzheimer's.

Part of the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) Program, the cohort study on mobile communications (COSMOS), is set to follow at least 250,000 people aged 18 to 69 from five European countries for 20 to 30 years.

The study will specifically investigate the long-term impact of cell phone use on health, according to Mireille Toledano, co-principal investigator of the study from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. "For the … Read more